The Cultural Transfer of Zaydī and non-Zaydī Religious Literature from Northern Iran to Yemen (Sixth/Twelfth Century through Eighth/Fourteenth Century) 1

The Zaydī community is a branch of Shīī Islam that has flourished mainly in two regions, namely the mountainous Northern Highlands of Yemen and the Caspian regions of Northern Iran. In theology, his views deviated from earlier Zaydī dogma, as he advocated human free will and the absolute otherness of God from His creation, as opposed to predeterminism and anthropomorphism. The two Zaydī states that were established in Yemen and Northern Iran constituted separate political and cultural entities. The situation changed radically in the early sixth/twelfth century, when a rapprochement between the two Zaydī communities began that eventually resulted in their political unification. The political unification of the two Zaydī states was accompanied by a transfer of knowledge from Northern Iran to Yemen that comprised nearly the entire literary and religious legacy of Caspian Zaydism. During al-Mansū's reign the intellectual dependence of Yemeni Zaydism on the northern Zaydī state was inverted, and the relationship worked the opposite way.